The Court of International Trade on June 21 granted a group of Spanish olive growers' motion to dismiss five of its cases on various reviews of the countervailing duty order on ripe olives from Spain. The dismissals come after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected a challenge from the olive exporters regarding the Commerce Department's determination on whether demand for a processed agricultural product is "substantially dependent" on its raw upstream iteration for purposes of assigning countervailing duties (see 2405200045). CAFC said the trade court was wrong to impose a 50% threshold in determining substantial dependence (Asociacion de Exportadores e Industriales de Aceitunas de Mesa v. United States, CIT # 24-00078, 23-00076, 23-00039, 22-00106, 21-00338).
The U.S. and importer Fedmet Resources filed dueling briefs at the Court of International Trade discussing the impact of a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision in an antidumping scope case, Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Co. v. U.S.
The Commerce Department wrongly countervailed benefits received by a Turkish rebar exporter under a law the department hadn’t known existed until the exporter noted it in a filing -- while rejecting that filing, said exporter claimed in a June 27 complaint (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #24-00096).
Refraining from joining exporters’ June 13 submission to the Court of International Trade (see 2406140059), a plaintiff-intervenor importer filed its own motion for judgment making similar arguments against Commerce’s finding that Thai solar panel exporters had circumvented an antidumping duty order on solar panels from China (Canadian Solar International Limited v. U.S., CIT # 23-00222).
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices July 1 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The Commerce Department was forced to use facts otherwise available in an investigation of Korean steel because the Korean government wasn't "forthcoming" when asked to provide data regarding an electricity subsidy’s costs, a petitioner said June 25 (Hyundai Steel Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00211).
The Commerce Department interpreted the scope of the antidumping duty order on cased pencils from China in a way that is "contrary to the plain language of its terms," importer School Specialty told the Court of International Trade in a June 28 complaint. The importer said the agency also misapplied the "substantial transformation test" in its scope ruling (School Specialty v. U.S., CIT # 24-00098).
The Supreme Court of the U.S. on June 28 overturned a hallmark of administrative law that had stood for four decades: the court's principle of deferring to federal agencies' interpretation of ambiguous statutes established in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices June 28 on AD/CVD proceedings:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 27 struck an entry of appearance filed by counsel for Encore Wire Corp., terminating the company as a defendant in a case on the 2019-20 antidumping review of aluminum wire and cable. The court said that the entry of appearance for three Cassidy Levy attorneys -- Myles Getlan, James Ransdell and Chase Dunn -- was noncompliant and that the attorneys failed to file a corrected version of the entry (Repwire v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1933).